Now I'm thinking clearly

I've more-or-less emerged from my Valentine's Day funk.

Did you know the idea of romantic love is relatively recent? So recent, in fact, that it hasn't even gotten to me yet. (Ba-dump. I'll be here all week.)

While the stories recounted in previous days are all true, they also represent a sample of the stories and scripts I've replayed in my mind dozens and even hundreds of times in previous years. I would go over and over the things that happened to me, thinking that maybe, on the forty-third or sixty-fourth or one hundred and tenth retelling, I would see some new angle, discover some new truth or see it in a different way.

It was akin to watching the same old Star Trek episode again because maybe this time, the new guy in the red shirt would survive his injuries and go on to have a successful and brilliant career in StarFleet.

Somewhere along the line I came across the concept of not thinking/not knowing. This is a Buddhist concept and may go back even further than that. Zen Master Seung Sahn described it this way:

"You don't understand where your true self is coming from. Don't know. This don't-know mind is very important. What am I? Don't know. Where are you coming from? Don't understand. An eminent teacher said: 'Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed, that is human. When you are born, where do you come from? When you die, where do you go?' Don't understand. Don't know. 'Life is like a floating cloud which appears; death is like a floating cloud which disappears. The floating cloud originally does not exist. Coming, going, death and life are also like that. But there is one thing which always remains clear and pure, not dependent on life and death. What is the one pure and clear thing?'

"Your body is like your car. This one thing controls your body; it is not dependent on life and death. Your body has life and death, but your true self, this one thing, is not dependent on life and death. But what is the one clear and pure thing? You don't understand? So, this don't understand, don't-know mind is very important. What am I? Don't know. Okay?"

This, like a lot of other Zen concepts, didn't make a lot of sense to me at first. Some of them still don't. But sometimes, at least for me, Zen works like this: you see or hear the thought or concept, and it doesn't make sense. You struggle with it. You think about it. You've got a tight grip on it. You twist it and turn it like a Rubik's cube. It still doesn't make sense. Finally, you give up and let go of it. And just as you're relaxing your grip and holding the Rubik's cube loosely in your hand instead of trapping it in a white-knuckled grip... a-ha. Suddenly all the colors line up.

So although I can't exactly explain what Seung Shan was saying, I think I get it.

So now, let's take that 'don't-know mind' concept and apply it to the issue at hand. I don't know how to 'fix' my problem with romance. But I don't have to know. I don't need to know. It's okay to not know.

"But doesn't that mean you'll never figure it out?"

Does it? I don't know.

"Are you going to spend the rest of your life alone?"

Am I? I don't know.

And it's okay to not know.

"Well, dude, maybe it's okay for you to not know, but if it were me, I think I'd be trying to figure that thing out."

I tried for years. I know slightly more now than I did when I started. Not as much, probably, as any of the people who have written the two dozen or so relationship books (Mars and Venus Try to Get Their Shit Together) you can find in any B&N or Borders.

It's okay to not know.

More about Zen and don't-know mind

Kwan Um Zen